John George describes the partnership with United Peace Relief, INC and sponsors to build a barracks, farm incubator and veteran training center to raise an army to help rebuild Detroit with home and business owners.

John George describes the partnership of With United Peace Relief, INC to build a barracks, farm incubator and veteran training center to raise an army to help rebuild Detroit with home and business owners.

With your help we will complete the purchase the HEP House located at 17300 Burgess Street, Detroit 48219 and three connecting lots on the corner of Burgess and Orchard for our USDA Urban FARM. With our partners Motor City Blight Busters of Detroit we intend to build The Veterans Green Village and Farm City in the Old Redford district of Detroit. The HEP HOUSE A 10 unit apartment building originally designed as assisted living for adults with disabilities in 1976. Three Lot Extension USDA FSA organic urban farm certification Our goal is to renovate the apartment building using sustainable energy solutions for veterans to build a self sustaining training facility for blight removal, disaster relief, urban farming and green energy production. Polley Wong has donated her time and profession talent to produce our interior design and reconstruction drawings for the permitting process. LARGE HARGE HUGS TO POLLEY! The Veterans Green Bus We are still short of our goal to renovate the bus and equip it with the gear to support our disaster response crews. But we are capable of demonstrating her locally We attended Maker Faire Detroit 2014 at The Henry Ford in Dearborn MI and won two Editor's Choice Blue Ribbons. Now that we own a base to house, train and employ veterans to rebuild the community with Motor City Blight Busters we also have the space to work on the bus. So please keep those donations coming.

There is article about us today on Huffington Post GreenNext Tuesday, it will have been one year since the monstrous Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast, killing 117 people in the U.S., destroying thousands of homes and wreaking $65 billion in damage. And while this year's hurricane season has been thankfully quiet so far, it does have some now questioning global warming's role in all of this; that is, whether climate change will actually increase, or decrease, the likelihood of Superstorm Sandy-type storms.

I say forget all that. Now would be a good time to revisit a recent study led by Katie Arkema at Stanford and co-authored by Peter Kareiva, provocative chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy (read his essay on how conservationists need to change their tune, here), that highlights the real problem when it comes to hurricanes: our coastline, increasingly being made more vulnerable to any tropical storm, thanks to sea level rise and habitat loss.

According to the study, 16 percent of U.S coastline -- home to 1.3 million people and $300 billion in residential property -- can now be qualified as "high-hazard." But this number will increase anywhere from 30 to 60 percent by the end of the century, depending on the level of sea rise as a result of climate change -- putting an additional 1.7 to 2.1 million people at risk, along with $400 to $500 billion in residential property. Loss of protective natural habitat like sand dunes and coral reefs compounds the risk even further, most especially for poor families and the elderly.

In the world as it could be, we would be doing everything in our power to protect that coastline (preserving natural habitat being more effective than any solution we could engineer, the study says) so that we wouldn't have to face a Hurricane Sandy scenario every season. But reality check time: We're already losing habitat worldwide at an alarming rate. Federal disaster relief costs have risen astronomically in the past three decades. We are going to have to find an efficient way to deal with the aftermath of these storms.

Enter Veterans Green Bus. Started by Gordon Soderberg, a U.S. Navy veteran with over 30 years of disaster response experience, his Crown Coach conversion can run 3,500 miles on a single fill-up of biodiesel or waste veggie oil (WVO, not to be confused with EVOO) and is equipped with solar windows that power its refrigeration. In the works: A satellite internet system that can run through the evening via solar-charged batteries.

Conceived by Soderberg while serving as a volunteer post-Hurricane Katrina (he built a small-scale biodiesel plant there to run equipment to keep lots cleared), the bus was purchased in 2010 and deployed for the first time during Hurricane Sandy at the behest of veterans service organization Team Rubicon, for which Soderberg served as a volunteer.

For the response to Sandy, the Green Bus (lovingly nicknamed Large Marge) transported volunteers to Rockaway Beach, Queens from Detroit and Chicago, as well as delivered much-needed tool donations from Home Depot. And while the bus may have appeared stripped down, the work inside was high-tech. In Rockaway, volunteer veterans used military grade geo-mapping and analysis software to assess Sandy's damage and keep track of the relief efforts.

Soderberg and the Green Bus also worked alongside FEMA, the Red Cross, and other government aid and nonprofit agencies, powering communication equipment and serving as office space for logistical staff -- most notably hosting former President Clinton for a briefing.

Those bigger organizations, however, seem to have missed out on something obvious to Soderberg: That a huge portion of any organization's disaster relief budget is spent (nay, wasted) on fuel. Fuel to transport volunteers to the disaster site and truck in supplies, fuel to run Bobcats to clear debris, fuel to run the generators. With diesel fuel close to $4 a gallon, those costs add up pretty quickly. "In the 30 years I've done disaster relief, I've never seen a fuel company donate fuel," Soderberg quips.

Converting vehicles to run on WVO may seem quaint in an era of hybrid and electric vehicles, but electricity isn't usually readily available in the aftermath of a disaster like Sandy. Neither is conventional fuel. After Sandy, dry pumps left volunteers waiting hours for a fill-up at one of New York City's few working gas stations. Using a fuel source that's free, abundant and located close to relief workers -- like used cooking oil from local restaurants happy to contribute to relief efforts -- just makes sense.

In the future, one imagines a whole fleet of these high-tech sustainable response vehicles on hand to deploy to any natural disaster. But first, Soderberg needs your help. He's trying to secure a permanent home for the Green Bus in Detroit, in a shuttered fire station now up for auction. There, the plan is to convert the building to house more disaster response vehicles, as well as the veterans who are going through the organization's training program. You can send Soderberg a donation here.

Where better than Detroit and in what better building than a Firehouse?

We have spent years helping communities across the country. We set up disaster relief camps after natural disasters, assisted hundreds of people in getting back into their homes and provided veterans with opportunities to travel the country they defended and serve during disasters when needed.

Our veterans are assisted in training and finding careers in disaster response, building energy efficient homes and making fuel from used cooking oil.

We need help to raise the money to buy a building for Veterans Green Bus Project here in Detroit.

We picked Detroit to locate our project from for several reasons.

First Mission Disaster Response Training.

1: Detroit has suffered and man made disaster of the last 50 years. The abandoned neighborhoods and buildings will provide our disaster response and deconstruction training programs with property to gain real world experience.

2: Detroit in centrally located within the USA to be able to respond within 24 hours.

3. Developing sustainable energy solutions for disaster response in Detroit makes good business sense. Here, we have access to the engineering capacity of the auto, truck and heavy equipment industry and DIY, R&D capacity.

4. Lets face it, property in Detroit is cheep. We can get a firehouse from the city for less than 100k.

5. There is a new VA hospital in Detroit to help our veterans.

6. There is a growing network of community organizations and businesses that have requested alternative fuel sources for transportation, building heat and electrical power within the City of Detroit.

7. The City of Detroit still has a pulse and the veterans who live here should not be forced to live in what looks like a war zone. They are also the very people we need to support and encouraged to move Detroit and help rebuild it.

8. The Veterans Green Bus Project was given a great deal of support from Detroit of the years. While we were in New Orleans Detroiters came to help us staying for weeks at a time, just to help people get back into their homes after a flood.

9. Deep fried food is still pretty popular in this part of the country and we rely on working with restaurants to participate in our used cooking oil recycling efforts to fuel our program.

10. We are attempting to demonstrate that our own sustainable disaster plan can work for a small nonprofit. We need to show that it can be down under the harshest of conditions. Detroit is a mess and it needs help. We intend to provide what assistance we can while training ourselves on how to rebuild our community more sustainably. Where better than Detroit and in what better building than a Firehouse?

We moved to Detroit a year ago to start a nonprofit program to train veterans in providing sustainable emergency transportation and power solutions for disaster response organizations. We were here a week when we got the call to respond to Hurricane Sandy. From Team Rubicon USA.

After six months of relief work and another couple of months touring the country to demonstrate how our relief vehicle can make its own fuel, we have returned to Detroit to begin looking for a permanent home base for our program.

Last year we got involved in the auction and were unsuccessful in winning a bid. At the time we were looking for a warehouse. at least 20 square ft with at least one 12 ft roll up door.

We have seen several Firehouses listed by the City but not through this auction.

The City wants a minimum bid of 60k and a business plan to show how the our use of the building will create jobs temporary and/or long term or improve the community in some way.

The is our plan, We are all veterans. For the last 8 years We have trained other veterans on how to respond to manmade and natural disasters. We've cleared lots and rebuilt homes post hurricane Katrina =, Rita Gustav, Ike, and Sandy made our own biodiesel plant to fuel our efforts and constructed log cabins for the forest service. Most recently we converted a bus to run on used cooking oil and capable of crossing the country without refueling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsIPo89q00g

We have chosen to work from Detroit because we feel the city has suffered the longest man made disaster in American history. The similarities we see between Detroit and New Orleans are startling both have suffered from neglect sInce losing over 40 percent of the population. Detroit just did not get wet.

We are a small non profit attempting to develop programs for duplications. Because of the need and the availability of buildings that suit our mission and goals Detroit is where we want to prove it can be done sustainably.

We are looking for veterans groups real estate associations and nonprofits in Detroit who want to participate in rebuilding communities using sustainable energy.

From disaster response to reconstruction we want to start with our own base of operations in a Detroit Fire House.

It is my Birthday today. I turned 52 and my mother is still sends me birthday presents.

This year I asked her to instead help a friend of mine. A veteran down on his luck and needing a bus ticket home.

That was the best gift I could imagine. Helping my mom help somebody who really needed it.

I want you to do the same thing. I want to help more veterans with The Veterans Green Bus and Veterans Green House Projects in Detroit.

We don't preach to veterans. We don't make ridiculous demands on them in order to get our help. They just need to want to help others and learn how to do it sustainably.

We are looking for volunteers who want to help rebuild Detroit with sustainable energy solutions. If you think you got what it takes to walk into a what looks like a 50 year old war zone and say, "Yeah, we can fix this". Then, we want you.

If you don't think you have that kind of commitment, thats cool too. Maybe, you would just like to see us try.

So for my birthday please help me gets these projects fully operational. and make a small donation.

Glen is now in San Jose and we have found temporary work for him there so he can feed himself. Lets get him back on his bike and rolling to Detroit where we have sustainable housing and lots of projects.

I am working with Adam Flynn on his new project in Chicago. I would like to make the donation on behalf of Adam and ForeLight and all of the good work that you are doing to help make the world a better place to live. Wish I could give more.

$100

Linda L. Wiles

17 months ago

I have seen the good that these folks do in New Orleans after Katrina and after Sandy. I volunteered with them in NOLA and experienced working with a truly selfless group who just wanted to help. I contribute when I can. I hope my friends will consider a little support. They do really good work!

$100

Anonymous

17 months ago

$100

Anonymous

18 months ago

$50

Karen

18 months ago

Gordon's been there for me - Hell, you've been there for me when I didn't even know it. I'm happy to be there for you. Get home safe.